Palin Breaks Ranks (Again): Vows to Balance Budget in First Term

Posted by Ali Frick, Think Progress at 5:33 PM on October 30, 2008.

Campaigning today, Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) said that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) would fix the economy by imposing a spending freeze. She also declared that a McCain administration would balance the budget by the end of their first term. Watch it:

Palin must not have gotten the memo. After promising a balanced budget (though on a constantly shifting timeline) for months, 10 days ago the campaign admitted that it would be virtually impossible to achieve that in just four years:

"The events of the past few months have completely thrown a wrench into that, there's no way round it. He would still like to balance it. It's going to be harder, take longer," said [top economic adviser Douglas] Holtz-Eakin at a debate with his Democratic counterpart at Columbia University in New York.

Tagged as: election, mccain, palin, balance the budget, break ranks

Ali Frick is a Research Associate for The Progress Report and ThinkProgress.org at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.